This book is predicated upon the belief that professionals, opinion leaders, and ordinary citizens will require a new literacy-ethnic literacy-to be successful in the 21st century in the United States. Immigration, questions concerning gender and ethnicity, have not only shaped our past, and direct our present, but will pattern our future. The Politics of Diversity in the United Statesis both a personal statement and a scholarly attempt to grapple with the questions of race and gender in the United States historically and in contemporary usage. It challenges dominant thinking on race and gender.